Jordan Furlong is a strategic consultant and analyst who forecasts the impact of the changing legal market on lawyers, law firms and legal organizations.

Learning to run

There’s an old expression among professional sports coaches: “You can’t teach speed.” It’s usually meant to indicate that there are things you can train athletes to do well (skills) and things that are simply God-given (raw talent), and it encourages the traditional view that talent is more valuable.

I’ve come to believe differently. In most markets, athletic and otherwise, there’s no shortage of talent: the physical and mental attributes of today’s new recruits surpass what most members of previous generations could boast. What’s missing, in many cases, are the skills, the knowledge of how to deploy those talents to maximum effect as a performer. Almost every good athlete coming out of high school and college can run fast; relatively few, however, learn to run well.

These thoughts came to me while reading (and commenting upon) an excellent post by UK law professor John Flood, in which he laments the complete disconnect between the legal education system and the rapidly evolving profession into which that system’s graduates will be deposited. If you asked your average law school professor to identify names like Axiom, Acculaw, Lawyers On Demand or any leading LPO, as John suggests, they wouldn’t know what you were talking about.

Law schools are so far behind the legal market’s evolutionary curve (and apparently so uninterested in catching up) that they seem extremely unlikely to lead conversations towards a better legal education and training system. But if so, where do we start fresh? I’d like to suggest that we begin by re-examining some fundamental assumptions about “talent” versus “skills” in the legal profession.

Virtually everyone in law school and the legal profession today has talent: some combination of raw intelligence, analytical and logical adeptness, and/or communication ability. That’s primarily thanks to the undergraduate education systems that produced these lawyers, the Law School Admissions Test that judges them, and the law school admission personnel who value these criteria head and shoulders above any others.

So the talent is there. Virtually everyone who’s in or preparing to enter the legal profession has speed. But not everyone in the legal profession can run well. And the newer you are, the more this is true. It’s almost universally the case for law students and new lawyers, in fact, who have received almost no training to help turn their talents into skills with which they can serve clients and make a living. (And I don’t just mean “practice” training; the tools with which you become a great lawyer include a really solid grounding in jurisprudence, legal history, and ethical philosophy, and not many law degrees can say they deliver that.)

Law schools haven’t been much help in this regard; but in fairness, it really wouldn’t have made much difference even had they spent the last 20 years teaching students “how to be lawyers.” That’s because the market for which those fantasy schools would have been preparing students is quickly disappearing. Nobody (not least me) can say with certainty what law practice in 2026 will look like, but it seems a pretty safe bet that it’s not going to look remotely like it did in 1996. Just as well, then, that we have mostly raw talent that doesn’t need to unlearn old habits before acquiring new ones.

But we still need someone to lead the way in the new skills-acquisition process for the legal profession — and that leads me to think there’s a huge market opportunity, right now, for a legal skills training company geared towards early 21st-century law practice. Never mind preparing students for Skadden or Linklaters; prepare them for Axiom, Lawyers On Demand, Clearspire, Quality Solicitors, Eversheds Legal, and similar operations that look like they’ll be offering an increasing percentage of legal jobs over the next couple of decades.

But — and this is important — we need to skill lawyers up, not down. We don’t want to be developing data entry clerks or automated-contract proofreaders here, and tomorrow’s best legal employers won’t be hiring those people. We need to train new lawyers in leadership, problem solving, project management, cultural fluency, emotional intelligence, technology, entrepreneurship, and other traits that have a decent shot at being the skills future lawyers will need. Give them the tools with which they can harness their talent and take it into any high-value or socially meaningful career, whether it involves the sale of legal services or not.

Law schools, as mentioned, might as well not be in this discussion. I don’t have a great deal of confidence in the practicing bar, either, especially given CLE administrators’ continued fondness for offering legal updates and calling it “professional development.” These are yesterday’s approaches; we need to find tomorrow’s. Solo Practice University remains a powerful model for this sort of innovation; we need more organizations interested in training lawyers to be gainfully and usefully engaged as lawyers in the decades to come. We need far greater use of true, supervised, mentor-based apprenticeship, because “doing” has a multiplier effect on “training.”

What we need, essentially, is a new breed of coaches who can deliver future-oriented professional development. There is no lack of opportunity awaiting them. There are thousands upon thousands of lawyers out there who can run fast but aren’t getting anywhere. They need someone to teach them how to run well.

4 Responses to “Learning to run”

Very insightful. Although, I have been practicing for a relatively short time I have noticed a missing piece(s) in my training both in law school and from the state bar. I believe you articulated the missing piece for me. Many attorneys are concerned about this but their problem is –they don’t know what they don’t know.

It is true that “yesterday’s approaches” are not working anymore, and that too much training is out of date. Coaching and mentoring are good models, and one question is, “Who are the coaches?” Are they dedicated professional educators? Are they partners at a big firm who are better at hazing than teaching? Are they well-intentioned volunteers (paid with CLE credit) who have little interest in specific learning objectives?

I recommend Atul Gawande’s recent New Yorker article called “Personal Best” (October 3 edition) about coaching for advanced professionals. There are insights there for the legal profession.

You are correct: the raw material is there, but the shape of the finished sculpture will look different from past figures. Frankly, I find it exciting to think how much can improve. Thanks for contributing to the discussion.

The problem is that law schools are housed within universities, which do not often value the practice-oriented teaching you advocate. They want professors who can bring in research grant money and professors who will publish, publish, publish. Those who teach the more practice-oriented subjects are often not appointed as professors but as lecturers and instructors. This doesn’t just indicate less respect but also less salary.

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Edge International

Jordan Furlong is a Partner with Edge International. One of the world's leading management consultancies, Edge has been providing strategic planning to law firms for more than 30 years. Learn more about Edge.

Stem Legal

Jordan Furlong is a Senior Consultant with Stem Legal and leads its Content Marketing service. Stem provides online profile and business development services for law firms in the U.S. and Canada. Learn more about Stem.